Smith Thompson Van Buren

Tintype photograph of Smith Thompson Van Buren. This is the only known photograph of Smith and was made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal. Date unknown.

Appears in "Van Buren Wizard of O.K. & 8th USA President" by Ted Welles, published 1987.

Smith Thompson Van Buren was the youngest of the Van Buren children. He was born on January 16, 1817, in Hudson, New York, when Martin Van Buren was 34. Smith was only 2 when his mother died, and he was raised by members of Hannah’s family after Van Buren left for Washington, DC. For a career, Smith followed in his father and older brother John’s footsteps and became a lawyer. On June 18, 1842, when Smith was 25 years old, he married Ellen King James.

Shortly afterwards, Smith and his family moved to Lindenwald to live with his father by his invitation. Smith decided that his father’s home was not large enough to accommodate his growing family. Smith won his father’s approval for an addition to his home, and he worked with famed architect Richard Upjohn to oversee the project. The work began in 1849 and was completed by the following year. The exterior of Van Buren’s original Federalist style home was converted to a hybrid Italianate-Gothic Victorian estate, complete with a four-and-a-half-story tower on the rear of the home. Many of Lindenwald’s modern conveniences can be traced to the Upjohn addition, such as running water, an indoor kitchen, and an indoor toilet. The addition was funded by Smith’s wife, Ellen, who unfortunately died before it was completed. They had been married for seven years. Smith continued to live with his father until 1855. At that time, he married Henrietta Eckford Irving, the niece of Washington Irving, and together they moved to Beacon, NY. Together, he and his second wife would have three children.

 

Smith was the impetus behind the expansion of Lindenwald including this Italianate tower on the rear of the building.

NPS Photo

Smith, like many in Van Buren’s time, was no stranger to tragedy. At the age of 25, his oldest son, Edward, fell terribly ill with what is believed to have been tuberculosis. His second wife, Henrietta, documented Smith’s difficulty coping with Edward’s illness: "poor Ed coughs, coughs all the time..." What a curious disease it is. I believe the patient always feels that he will get better until the very last. It does seem so strange – to see a young man – in the prime of his life – cut down. Poor Smith feels so dreadfully hard for him. He scarcely even believes that Ed is as ill as he is. He says often to me—"I really think Ed is decidedly better today, do not you?" I never say yes, for I do want him to be prepared.

Sometime around 1873, Smith began to suffer from a condition that was eventually diagnosed as "softening of the brain." As his condition progressed, Smith was admitted to the Hudson River State Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1875. Smith died there on December 10, 1876, when he was only 59. He is buried in Beacon, New York. Henrietta lived into the 20th century and, in 1906, was the person who donated Martin Van Buren’s autobiography to the Library of Congress.

His four children with Ellen were Ellen James Van Buren (1844-1929), Edward L. Van Buren (1848-1873), Katherine Barber Van Buren (1849-1908), and Hannah Van Buren (18??-1846).
His three children with Henrietta were Martin Van Buren IV (1856-1942), Eliza Eckford Van Buren (1857-1942), and Marion Irving Van Buren (1861-1928).